Pakistan bans foreign media covering indigenous rights movement

After snatching the liberty of independence from the local media, the state forces in Pakistan have moved on to ban foreign media outlets in a clear bid to curtail the free press and cater its masses with only selective and bias representations of the news.

This ban has spurred following the rising popularity of the Pashtun Tahafuz (safety) Movement, an indigenous movement run by the ethnic Pashtun minority in Pakistan against forced disappearances, extra-judicial killings and other forms of persecutions and discrimination. The Voice of America’s Pashto and Urdu services have been banned for covering the PTM.

In the views of Amanda Bennett, the director of VoA, any attempt to block the websites deprives Urdu and Pashto speakers in the region access to a trusted news source,” she said, adding that the organisation was “troubled” by the block.

Under evident pressure from the state forces, the local media have been pressed into enforcing a blatant blackout of the PTM, despite thousands of grieving citizens attending their public gatherings in different parts of the country. The ban on VoA – which follows a similar ban on the Radio Free Europe’s Pashto service last year – exposes the Pakistani state’s intention to control the flow of information; it is evident from the fact that the Army in Pakistan has already warned the PTM about the use of force.

This might make some wonder what this movement – which gained momentum following the extra-judicial killing of an ethnic Pashtun man in Pakistan’s biggest city Karachi – is up to. According to the popular leader of the PTM, Manzoor Pashteen, they are simply demanding from the security and intelligence agencies that the missing persons must be produced in courts and should be punished legally if they were found guilty, while those found innocent must be released.

Compared to the tactics of using the law to curtail the free press and distribution of non-bias information, the PTM’s demand does portray a good image of the Pakistani state. And, despite the debate the over significance of free the press and the freedom of speech, the Pakistani state is also complicit in imposing restrictions on the PTM leadership in the country.

Pashteen and his fellow parliamentarians Mohsin Dawar and Ali Wazeer were denied free movement within the country, ironically enough on December 10, the day which marks international Human Rights Day.